Australian tech company Clearview AI is violating Facebook’s privacy regulations by scraping users’ photos without their consent. These photos are being used to create a database for their facial recognition app, which Clearview AI then sells to law enforcement agencies. Facial recognition technology has been proven to have large gaps in accuracy that disproportionately affect women and people of color, and can lead to false arrests and police harassment. Facebook users are not being notified of or asked to authorize this use of their photos, and may not even be aware that their personal photos have become the property of a company whose intentions, associations, and security capacities are still largely unknown by the public.

Facebook is aware of the company’s violation of its own regulations, but has not taken action. Clearview AI is one of the first companies to release technology capable of such extreme violations of privacy; even Google has refrained, citing dystopian implications. If unregulated, Clearview AI’s facial recognition software, which outperforms even the FBI’s current technology by a large margin, is a dangerous tool that can too easily be used for stalking, blackmail, profiling, and even national security threats, not to mention “Big Brother”-level surveillance practices.

Please sign the below petition calling on Facebook to stop this unacceptable abuse of power.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

Clearview AI has admitted to violating your regulations and breaching the privacy of your users. The company is scraping photos without users’ knowledge or consent in order to compile a database that it can sell to private entities. This is a clear violation of users’ rights, and has very serious implications for the future of privacy on a global scale.

Facial recognition software is often inaccurate, particularly when using large databases and especially when identifying people of color. Clearview AI is a relatively unknown company, and no outside testing or verification has been done to ensure its accuracy or its security capabilities. While its database is currently being used by law enforcement, there is no guarantee as to how Clearview AI may use the photos it has scraped in the future, or how well it will be able to protect them. You must do right by your 2.37 billion users and set an example for other social media companies by enforcing your own regulations and banning Clearview AI from accessing Facebook users’ photos.